New Roots
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Five things Xander doesn't miss about the Society ... and one person he still does.


New Roots

By Laura Schiller

Based on the Matched Trilogy

Copyright: Ally Condie

1.

He does not miss the Classification System. Even though, in theory, everyone was equal in the Society and the system was intended only for protection against the lawless, in practice he has seen the harm it does. Ever since he saw Ky's stern, unchildlike face as he held out his stolen red pills – _You don't play with people's lives, Xander_ – and wondered what could bring that look into the eyes of a boy his own age, it has become more and more clear to him that if life was a game, the game was rigged. Someone had to even the stakes eventually, and if that meant losing his unfair advantage, so be it.

In this village, the dream of equality has more or less come true. Not perfectly, of course – someone has to lead rituals, settle feuds, cast the deciding vote when the troughs are equally full. And there will always be people trying to hoard food, wool or medicines, cheating each other in trade or in love, or fighting over real or imagined insults, human nature being what it is. But nobody here has ever been exiled for speaking out against the leader or creating something new. There are no Anomalies or Aberrations here, and for that, Xander is grateful.

2.

He doesn't miss the food. Having bland, mass-produced meals delivered right to his door, portion sizes adjusted according to how some stranger decides his body should look, has always struck him as a rather silly way to live. In Endstone, making food is hard work, and everyone, even a soft-handed Society boy, is expected to do their share.

Soon enough, his hands are no longer soft. They grow blisters, then calluses, as he learns to wield a shovel and a scythe. He sheds sweat, blood and sometimes tears in the fields, swinging the scythe in line with the other men as the women gather the stalks behind them. He learns how to chop down trees for firewood and how to plant new ones; how to build a fire in the hearth of their small cottage; how to gut the fish Lei brings home and fry them until they are crisp and golden; how to slaughter a sheep with one cut so that it feels as little pain as possible. He learns how to curse the rain for coming too early or too late, and how to laugh, dance and drink beer with his neighbors after a successful harvest.

In Endstone, he earns his bread in every sense of the word. It can be long, tedious, and sometimes backbreaking work – but he wouldn't miss a single moment.

3.

The plumbing is something he expects to miss, but doesn't. Curiously, hot showers and chlorinated swimming pools are not among the necessities of life after all. In spring, summer and fall, he washes in the river with a lump of soap made from animal fat. It startles him at first when people drop their clothes and join him, but their matter-of-factness soon cures him of his modesty. He never tires of seeing Lei's black hair swirl around her like ink, the way her golden skin sparkles in the sunlight, or her mischievous smile as she flicks water into his face.

Late fall and winter are a different matter; it's not easy to get used to a freezing-cold outhouse or the commotion of burning enough wood to heat a bathtub. But, as with most things in the villages, the hard work only makes it more worthwhile.

_Besides_, he thinks, watching Lei's naked silhouette against the fire, _there's always another spring._

4.

He most definitely does not miss the sleep tags. If the Society's monitors had seen the nightmares he gets sometimes, they would have bundled him off to the nearest psychiatrist. He dreams of the Plague, the stench of bleeding sores and the glassy emptiness of his patients' eyes. He dreams of hard, bitter faces turning away from him, stones clattering into the trough to vote for his death. He dreams of Lei, Ky, Cassia, his family, himself – all going still, and dying forgotten on the forest floor.

At first, he tries to suppress them. Lucid dreaming used to be something he took pride in, to hide his hopes and fears from those ever-present monitors. But he's out of practice now, and suppressing the nightmares only makes him restless and irritable in the daytime.

Lei tells him to stop. Where she comes from, nightmares are considered healthy, a sign that he is strong enough to fight demons in his sleep. She has enough demons of her own that she understands.

Sometimes, one or both of them will wake up with a gasp in the middle of the night, clinging to each other, like two children during a snowstorm. Sometimes they talk about it in whispers and sobs, but more often, their bodies do the talking, building a slow fire against the cold.

After one of those nights, he feels brighter in the morning, and so does she.

5.

He does not miss being a physic. He'll always be a physic, wherever he goes.

It's nerve-wracking at first, having to rely on his own hands and brain, or even Tess and Noah's kind instructions, for the correct measurements and proportions of a cure, instead of trusting a patient's recovery to the Society's tried-and-tested pills. But the marvellous thing is that it usually _works_, that a mess of ground-up leaves or berries in someone's bandage or a disgusting cup of tea can burn out a fever or knit together a broken bone. He had no idea nature could be so powerful. And on the rare occasions that their herbs are not enough, Xander is thankful from the bottom of his heart that the United Provinces of America, in the person of President Anna and her friends, continue to trade precious antibiotics and disinfectants for the handmade artifacts that only villagers can make.

When his first child is born, Xander is terrified out of his mind. Sitting next to Lei, letting her crush his fingers in her sweat-slick hand, hearing her scream and pray and curse in two languages at once, it hits him like a shovel to the head just how alone they are out here. If anything went wrong and he called an airship, would it even arrive in time? So much pain can't be normal, no matter what his mentors say, and _no,_ by all that's sacred, he can't go through this, he can't lose her too –

Then another, tiny voice chimes in with Lei's, and a beaming Tess hands him something wrapped in a white blanket. Something pink and wrinkled and fragile, something that moves, squinting bright eyes against the dawn.

Their son's eyes are blue.

Lei smiles and bursts into tears when Xander hands him over, this new life they created all on their own. She names him Jun, the closest she can get to "Victor" in her native language – the perfect name for a child who beat the odds before he was born.

1.

What Xander does miss about the former Society, and always will, is its people. They come to visit, but rarely, and they are not the same; never the same as those he once loved before the Rising and the Plague.

He misses his father's voice, a warm, vibrant baritone that could fill up a whole room with laughter, but drop to a barely-audible murmur when, out of range from the port, he taught his son about the true meaning of justice. He misses his mother's hands, always ready to adjust his collar and smooth back his hair, which he pretended to dodge, but never really did. He misses racing Tannen in the pool or on the tracker, but especially playing on the same soccer team – the whoops of triumph when they won, slapping palms, ruffling each other's hair. They were so much alike. They could have been mistaken for twins if not for Tannen's extra height when they were children. Eery time they meet, he wants to ask why Tannen didn't join the Rising. It's never a good time.

Most of all, Xander misses Cassia. She threads her way through almost every memory of his boyhood: wide-eyed with awe at receiving her First School balloons. Following her grandfather off the high diving board. Smiling from behind a fanned deck of cards. Shimmering in green silk on the day of their Match Banquet. Kissing him with earth on her fingers and vanilla on her lips. Proudly defending him at his trial after he destroyed Oker's first cure. Saying goodbye in the shadow of the mountains. His best friend, his first love, and the first person to break his heart.

They have grown side by side for so long that their roots will always be tangled, and he would not change that if he tried. Still, he has put down new roots now; just like the newroses on the day of that kiss, he thrives where he is planted. The first love, he has learned, does not need to be the last.

When his eldest daughter Linnea chooses green to wear on her wedding (and, more importantly, chooses her own husband) Xander smiles to himself as he remembers.


End file.
